Le rôle de l'usage sur le développement des constructions nominales chez les enfants pré-lecteurs

International audienceThe development of nominal constructions including a categorical liaison in prereaders has been studied using usage-based theories (Chevrot et al., 2009). In this article, we investigate the development of the variable liaison, which is a sociolinguistic marker in French (for example, its frequency in adult usage depends on the speaker’s socio-economic status). One hundred and eighty-five children aged between 2 and 6, belonging to two distinct SES groups (higher- and lower-SES) participated in a picture naming task eliciting the production of variable liaisons in "adjective + noun" context.Our results show that social differences appear progressively during development. For 5-6 year olds, the social stratification of variable liaison use, observed in adults, appears in child productions.In line with the principles of usage-based theories, we extend the developmental model of the acquisition of nominal constructions in categorical liaisons to the context of variable liaisons.Le développement des constructions nominales en contexte de liaison catégorique chez l’enfant pré-lecteur a fait l’objet d’une modélisation dans le cadre des théories basées sur l’usage (Chevrot et al., 2009). Dans cet article, nous examinerons le développement de la liaison variable, marqueur sociolinguistique du français, dont la fréquence de réalisation, chez l’adulte, est notamment liée à l’origine sociale.Cent quatre-vingt cinq enfants, issus de milieux sociaux contrastés (des enfants de cadres et des enfants d’ouvriers) et âgés de 2 à 6 ans, ont passé une tâche expérimentale de dénomination d’images induisant la production de liaisons variables dans le contexte "adjectif + nom".Nos résultats montrent que les différences sociales se créent progressivement au cours du développement et qu’à 5-6 ans, la stratification sociale des usages de la liaison variable, relevée chez l’adulte, est en place dans les productions enfantines.En accord avec les principes défendus par les théories basées sur l’usage, nous généraliserons le modèle développemental de l’acquisition des constructions nominales en contexte de liaison catégorique à celui de la liaison variable

Language evaluation and use during early childhood: Adhesion to social norms or integration of environmental regularities?

International audienceWhether social uses of language, in concert with their acquisition, are driven by the awareness of the social value assigned to linguistic variants remains unanswered. The present study examines how 185 French native speakers, aged from 2 to 6 years from different social backgrounds, produce and evaluate a well-known French phonological alternation, the liaison: obligatory liaisons, which are categorical and do not vary sociolinguistically for adults, and variable liaisons, which are a sociolinguistic variable and are more frequently produced by higher-class adults. Different developmental and social patterns were found for obligatory and variable liaisons. Children's productions of obligatory liaisons were related to their judgments when 3-4 years old, regardless of the children's social backgrounds. However, a developmental gap was observed between higher- and lower-class children that appeared earlier in production than in evaluation. For variable liaisons, children's productions were related to their judgments, irrespective of their social backgrounds, at 4-5 years. Social differences appeared in both children's productions and judgments a year later. Although the ability to evaluate different linguistic forms emerges at an early developmental stage, the awareness of the social value of the variants does not seem to precede the ability to select the standard varieties in formal situations

Differences in the Components and Relations of a Multidimensional Model of Reading Comprehension in Low and Average 8- to 11-Year-Old French Readers.

International audienceIf the simple view of reading earlier characterised reading comprehension as a product of decoding and linguistic comprehension, research has evolved to a more complex simple view including speed or fluency as a major factor of reading comprehension. Through this complex simple view approach, multidimensional models of reading comprehension emerged, which, in addition, proposed the implication of other cognitive skills. The purpose of our study is; Firstly, as we hypothesised a structural theoretical model of the relationships between oral language skills, decoding and word fluency, oral text comprehension, reading fluency and reading comprehension, we want to test if this model fits the data obtained from 8 to 11-year-old French students and to identify the contribution and relations of each skill to reading comprehension. Secondly, we want to explore the relations of text fluency with other components of the model and with reading comprehension. Thirdly, we try to identify variations of the relations between these components according to the average or low level of reading achievement of pupils. The results obtained by studying differences in the relationships between multiple predictors of reading comprehension for low and average primary school readers seem to indicate that proficiency in reading is acquired by passing from an independent participation of the OLS and WLS to reading comprehension, as stated by the simple view of reading, to a more integrated functioning with some links between these two groups of skills, which calls for more complex views of reading

Automated analysis of pupils' self-explanations of a narrative text

International audienceWe present a method devised to automatically analyze pupils' verbalizations during reading and to reveal some of the strategies they use. An experiment with 44 primary school pupils (3rd and 5th grade) reading a narrative text and verbalizing what they understood at predefined breaks showed, firstly, that machine results are correlated with experts'; secondly, that the recall of recent sentences is not uniform across verbalizations and subject to a grade effect; thirdly, that there is a grade effect in the recall of distal causal sentences

Automated analysis of pupils' self-explanations of a narrative text

International audienceWe present a method devised to automatically analyze pupils' verbalizations during reading and to reveal some of the strategies they use. An experiment with 44 primary school pupils (3rd and 5th grade) reading a narrative text and verbalizing what they understood at predefined breaks showed, firstly, that machine results are correlated with experts'; secondly, that the recall of recent sentences is not uniform across verbalizations and subject to a grade effect; thirdly, that there is a grade effect in the recall of distal causal sentences

Sex Differences in Language Across Early Childhood: Family Socioeconomic Status does not Impact Boys and Girls Equally

International audienceChild sex and family socioeconomic status (SES) have been repeatedly identified as a source of inter-individual variation in language development; yet their interactions have rarely been explored. While sex differences are the focus of a renewed interest concerning emerging language skills, data remain scarce and are not consistent across preschool years. The questions of whether family SES impacts boys and girls equally, as well as of the consistency of these differences throughout early childhood, remain open. We evaluated consistency of sex differences across SES and age by focusing on how children (N = 262), from 2;6 to 6;4 years old, from two contrasting social backgrounds, acquire a frequent phonological alternation in French – the liaison. By using a picture naming task eliciting the production of obligatory liaisons, we found evidence of sex differences over the preschool years in low-SES children, but not between high-SES boys and girls whose performances were very similar. Low-SES boys' performances were the poorest whereas low-SES girls' performances were intermediate, that is, lower than those of high-SES children of both sexes but higher than those of low-SES boys. Although all children's mastery of obligatory liaisons progressed with age, our findings showed a significant impeding effect of low-SES, especially for boys

ReaderBench, an Environment for Analyzing Text Complexity and Reading Strategies

Session: Educational Data MiningInternational audienceReaderBench is a multi-purpose, multi-lingual and flexible environment that enables the assessment of a wide range of learners' productions and their manipulation by the teacher. ReaderBench allows the assessment of three main textual features: cohesion-based assessment, reading strategies identification and textual complexity evaluation, which have been subject to empirical validations. ReaderBench covers a complete cycle, from the initial complexity assessment of reading materials, the assignment of texts to learners, the capture of metacognitions reflected in one's textual verbalizations and comprehension evaluation, therefore fostering learner's self-regulation process

Contrôle et régulation de la compréhension : l'acquisition de stratégies de 8 à 11 ans

La recherche présentée ici a pour objectif de décrire le développement des comportements de contrôle et de régulation de la compréhension (désignés par le terme de stratégies de compréhension en lecture dans la littérature) à partir du recueil de verbalisations d'auto-explications au cours de la lecture

Sociolinguistique et sciences cognitives: l’individu, le collectif et le réseau

International audienceLa sociolinguistique, qui étudie les interactions entre langage et société, tient une place particulière dans un paysage scientifique où s’intensifient les collaborations entre disciplines de traditions éloignées. Elle rencontre actuellement deux défis : 1/ affronter la complexité du lien entre langage-société dans ses aspects sociaux, cognitifs, collectifs, individuels ; 2/ recueillir et traiter de grandes quantités de données. Nous proposons une nouvelle alliance entre sociolinguistique et science des réseaux afin de relever ces défis dans un cadre conceptuel cohérent et de les opérationnaliser dans des démarches empiriques fidèles aux buts de la discipline